The continuous rise in global environmental challenges has led to urgency toward establishing a secure framework to achieve sustainable development goals. This study establishes a novel theoretical framework to analyze the role of energy prices, energy consumption, gold prices and economic growth on environmental degradation in newly industrialized economies. To realize sustainable development goals and foster environmental defence, this study utilizes CS-ARDL as the main econometric approach to investigate the asymmetric association between environmental degradation and relevant factors. We also use AMG, CS-DL, Driscoll-Kray and FGLS to enhance the robustness of our findings. Our econometric approach reveals that energy resource prices and renewable energy consumption reduce environmental degradation, while gold prices and fossil energy consumption elevate environmental pollutants. We also confirm the existence of the EKC hypothesis. The findings of our extensive analysis paved the way for a well-designed environmental policy for NIC economies should focus on renewable energy consumption, green investments, and structural changes.

Green bonds are useful monetary tools that can finance sustainable endeavors to bolster an eco-friendly economy. This research inspects the frequency-domain causal relationship between diverse green bond types and the green economy from June 30, 2014 to August 3, 2023. The goal is to understand both permanent and temporary causal phenomena between them. The findings reveal that only pioneering green bonds display a robust bidirectional causal link with an eco-efficient economy. Meanwhile, other green bond types, like conventional, municipal, and currency-dominated green bonds, may be susceptible to greenwashing due to the absence of a thorough permanent causal tie with an ecologically sustainable economy. Additionally, enhancing pioneering green bonds by integrating ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) stocks can transform the cause-and-effect dynamic between specific green bonds and the green economy. It shifts from a bilateral cause to a unilateral one stemming from the environmentally friendly economy and extending to distinguished green bonds. This phenomenon persists whether the 5% annual fee for sustaining and managing the index combining green bonds and ESG equities is considered or not. Interestingly, an environmentally conscious economy, in both persistent and transient associations, consistently affects ecological bonds with diverse traits. This highlights the importance of the overall state of an environmentally responsible economy in enhancing green bonds. These discoveries provide novel perspectives for green market regulators and policymakers to design improved standards for green assets.